THREE CLIMATIC ODDITIES AND ONE LUNATIC ACT

DURING THE DATES November 25-27, 2007 three phenomena occurred inside the Philippines. It gave me goose chills for these series of events were unprecedented in meteorological and climatic history in this part of the world that gave rise to the suspicion that climate change have now reared its fearsome effect upon us.

First of these were the appearance of three tropical storms, all at the same time, within the Philippine area of responsibility. Storm “Lando”, which was in the process of exiting the country after wrecking havoc over Central Philippines in its westerly route the week before; storm “Mina”, which got stalled at the vicinity of Catanduanes Island packing 175 kph winds; and storm “Nonoy”, following the trail of “Mina”.

The second phenomenon was the circling dance of the storms “Mina” and “Lando” in what the meteorologists termed as the Fujiwara Effect. This climatic oddity was first observed by Dr. Katsuo Fujiwara in 1902 in Japan, for which name was eventually attributed to him. The stronger “Mina” seemed to have siphoned off the weaker “Lando” causing the latter to change direction in a semi-circle and reversed back to where it came!

Then, for a preview of worse things to come, the sea water, spawned on by the gravity pull of a full moon and a storm surge, rose to an unprecedented level. In the Mactan Shrine of Lapulapu City (site of the Magellan and Lapulapu monuments), what always used to be dry land, suddenly, got inundated with sea water while seafood restaurants erected on stilts on the seashore nearby saw their floorings being flooded for the first time.

At Cebu City, sea walls located at the villages of Ermita and Pasil, where engulfed by large sea swells causing four houses to float and being removed from their foundations. Elsewhere in other parts of the Visayas and Northern Mindanao, hundreds of families were evacuated to safer grounds as big waves rose to great heights destroying their homes.

Fortunately though, the attempted putsch of Trillanes et al at the Manila Peninsula Hotel in the financial district of Makati which came at a later date (November 29) after bolting out from their guards from the middle of a court hearing did not classify as a phenomenon even though the possibility of a lunar interference which, sometimes, a full moon does to a body of flexible matter like fluids or of a living organism or creature whose body mass contained fluid-like attributes, causes it to move or act in a strange and radical manner, which that attempted power grab episode seemed to indicate.

It is a political absurdity though that occurs now and then up there in Manila that usually get a good exposure by an equally comical media that, altogether, makes the market barometer stick gyrating and shaking up and down crazily in the Philippine Stock Exchange.

Even though we in the south are isolated from those political troubles affecting the National Capital Region, still, tremors caused by those events affect us down here in the provinces. Politically, we're immune to the turmoil up there and life goes on here oblivious of the drama, but what got our goat is when those foolishness occur prices of basic commodities would go berserk in the provinces without our doing and, most of the time, fundings for projects would halt to a trickle and national basic services would drag in a wait-and-see attitude.

And why does Cebu, the rest of the Visayas and Mindanao suffer the same fate every time clowns do their thing up there in Imperial Manila? I can't find any good answers but just hope and pray that we don't contract the grime and the diseases that they love to wallow in up there.

In the meantime, let's worry more about the wrath of nature.

Document done in OpenOffice 2.1 Writer, Trebuchet MS font, size 12.